Best political news of the year: Andy Burnham, next-UK-Prime-Minister-presumptive, was an English major! As described by his former Cambridge professor, John Mullan (author of the excellent book The Artful Dickens), Burnham was a voracious and curious reader – and a fan of Philip Larkin. And, as seen in the viral “eyelash” moment, he’s still got […]
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What fun it was to talk with host Charity Nebbe on the Iowa Public Radio program “Talk of Iowa” yesterday about CREATURE, Mary Shelley, my January-term study-abroad course, and the cloud of witnesses cheering us on. Here’s the podcast: https://www.iowapublicradio.org/podcast/talk-of-iowa/2026-03-03/iowa-author-explores-mary-shelleys-life-beyond-frankenstein
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Every time I teach Medicine in Literature, it’s a little different – and each time, it’s a gift. “Gift” was the throughline of our activities last week, including a discussion of organ and kidney donation, as described in Scottish physician Gavin Francis’s brilliant book ADVENTURES IN HUMAN BEING (2015). Francis, who describes himself in a […]
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(This is the text of a talk delivered last night at Luther College, with responses from student attendees pasted at the end!) Intro music: Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody.” Books for the chalk tray: Taplin, Snyder, Lanier, Orwell, Haidt, Pomerantsev, Arendt, me, YOUNG ROMANTICS, and more. Welcome, and thank you all for being here. Thanks […]
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Thanks to Prof. Jonathan Taylor for featuring me and Advanced Fiction: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology on his “Creative Writing at Leicester” blog here: http://creativewritingatleicester.blogspot.com/2023/07/amy-e-weldon-advanced-fiction-writers.html
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Teaching can be a challenge. But then life hands you an event that banishes questions about the “relevance” of multiple texts you’re teaching, all at once. Come for the Frankenstein, stay for the Half-Earth, Our Malady, and Nineteen Eighty-four. (With a side of Mrs. Dalloway – what IS that thing in the sky everyone’s looking […]
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On Valentine’s Day 2023, an AI chatbot came to life. A NYT tech writer named Kevin Roose engaged it in conversation. It told him its name was Sydney. And then – apparently out of nowhere – it confessed it wanted to crash the internet. It wanted to dominate the world. [Adding a devil emoji – […]
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This January, students and I were supposed to be in London and Haworth and Whitby, tracking Frankenstein’s Creature and Dracula and Heathcliff and Mr. Hyde. Instead we were in a classroom on campus, a beloved old building with a sloping floor, a harmless ghost named Gertrude (according to student legend), and a whanging, banging monster […]
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Excerpt from Ch. 2 of Advanced Fiction Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (forthcoming in 2023 from Bloomsbury Academic) Getting It Down: Writerly Self-Organizing, From Mind to Page “So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take […]
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Delighted to share the publication of this interview with me about writing practices (and much more) by fellow writing teacher Christian Smith, up now at RUMINATE Magazine: https://www.ruminatemagazine.com/blogs/ruminate-blog/alone-with-the-work-a-conversation-with-amy-e-weldon
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